Controllers Council recently held a panel discussion on 5 Ways CFOs are Transforming Financial Operations with AI-Driven Automation, sponsored by Esker.
Esker is a global cloud platform built to unlock strategic value for finance, procurement, and customer service professionals and strengthen collaboration between companies by automating the cash conversion cycle. Founded in 1985, Esker operates in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France, and US headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin.
Our expert panelists included Glenn Hopper, Octavio (OJ) Laos, and Aaron Le Hew. Glenn Hopper is head of AI R&D at Aventis Advisory Group, focused on finance and accounting sectors. A former CFO, Glenn is author of the Amazon bestselling book, Deep Finance: Corporate Finance in the Information Age, and his new book, AI Mastery for Finance Professionals. Glenn resides in Memphis, Tennessee.
OJ Laos is director of AI Labs at Armanino, a top 20 accounting firm, where our board chair, Lindy Antonelli, is a partner. OJ is a frequent speaker on AI topics and contributor to academic publications and news outlets, including Fox Business. OJ earned a JD from the UCLA School of Law, and resides in Chicago.
Aaron Le Hew is joining us from Esker, where he’s director of sales for invoice cash with 15 plus years’ experience in manufacturing and distribution and more. Aaron resides in Madison, Wisconsin.
Following are key takeaways to this discussion. If you are interested in learning more, view the full webinar archive video here.
What are the top applications for AI in corporate finance and accounting (F&A) operations?
OJ: AP and AR scanning, invoices, things like that are generally the most straightforward when it comes to the technology. They’re going to be the most predictable and leverage the most frequently. I think the other side of it that is obviously more emerging but maybe unclear to a lot of people is leveraging more of the generative AI side, but not as a be all end all solution. Excel has a Python add-in that allows you to use Copilot to ask questions, build a visualization, and analyze a data set. Now what generative AI is doing is allowing anyone in the finance/accounting department to be able to leverage simple little coding techniques to get the most out of their data just by using plain language.
Glenn: I think people are finding individual productivity hacks and that’s really for generative AI right now because it’s implementation into true workflows. I think that applications in finance and accounting, it’s a lot, individuals are using it, their leadership is, but there are privacy concerns around it. So, I’m just throwing out it out there that it’s so important to have a policy around usage of AI.
Aaron: I think you’re starting to see a lot more companies, even people starting to use it, especially the generative AI to look at documents or spreadsheets and say, “why don’t I just upload this and give me a quick visual or can you run me a report off of this?” It just saves so much people time to having to do pivot charts, learning and teaching all of this stuff. I think you’re seeing some massive success just by entering in a couple of prompts.
Where does AI strategy/planning/implementation start?
Glenn: if you’re an accountant and you’re not trying to learn Python and machine learning and all that, the idea of, now I must become a tech expert or a machine learning engineer, it’s a lot to take on. So, it’s got to be a partnership. You don’t understand the tech and you are trying to track KPIs and you’re relying on what reports IT can give you, well, you don’t want IT setting KPIs just because they’re the tech people. So, it’s kind of in the same vein of that. It needs to be agreement across all the organizations of how we’re going to use it.
Aaron: It must be a collaborative approach, and it can be top-down or a bottom-up approach.
OJ: I’m in an interesting spot because I’m really in our operations IT side, but then we have our own external consulting as well. As a service that we offer and work closely with them as we implemented our copilot, and we think of generative AI rollout. I think the biggest part to think about is not just the technology side, but the change management aspect. You must have coordination from top leadership.
Where are you seeing AI used in F&A?
- Data Sets
- Payment Side
- Forecasting
- Supplier Side
- Accounts Payable
Is corporate F&A an “AI early adopter” or “AI laggard,” and why?
OJ: I would say early adopter. Any role that is more numbers heavy, I think has been earlier in advocating for the use of machine learning, especially with the shift to generative AI.
Glenn: I think we have been appropriately cautious. So not being on the bleeding edge because you don’t want to rely on a non-deterministic system that you don’t understand what’s going on in the black box of how it’s working. Now there was a Gartner 2024 survey of finance leaders and 58% say they’re using AI, and I think that that’s including machine learning and all that. That’s up 21% though, year over year.
Aaron: Historically, would say F &A or accounting has lagged behind, but they’ve been now a “fast follower”. Compared to marketing, HR, supply chain, they’ve been using advanced technology for quite some time. But you know what, I think what made the change was the COVID-19 pandemic. It helped people to really look at their tech stack to help with the resilience and the disruption that was happening in the market.
Any advice for organizations when implementing AI in F&A?
- Work with your software partners and see what tools are readily available to you
- You kind of have to bifurcate the difference between specific projects or tools that you’re doing for a function.
- Identify the high impact use cases, but if it’s high, you want to look, and if there’s a risk if you get it wrong, don’t turn it over to AI.
- Focus on areas with immediate ROI like close automation and forecasting and kind of pilot and iterate.
- Collaborate with your team.
- Find the areas that are right for automation and then continue to expand upon that.
What does the next year/2 years/3 years look like for AI in corporate F&A?
To view this question and learn more about AI in financial operations, download the full webinar here.
ABOUT THE SPONSOR:
Esker is a global cloud platform built to unlock strategic value for finance, procurement, and customer service professionals and strengthen collaboration between companies by automating the cash conversion cycle. Founded in 1985, Esker operates in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France, and US headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit https://www.esker.com/ to learn more.
